Commercial Counsel

Ashby • San Francisco, CA

21h • Remote

About The Position

About the Job: 👋 I’m Kelly , Senior Legal Counsel at Ashby. I joined Ashby recently as our first dedicated legal hire and I’m now building the legal team to support our next phase of growth. After 12 years building and scaling in-house legal teams, I was drawn to Ashby for its ambition, product vision, and the exceptional talent across the company. Working alongside smart, low-ego, high-ownership operators every day is energizing and inspires you to bring your best ideas forward. The leadership team is decisive and thoughtful, making intentional choices that balance speed, customer focus, and long-term growth. Now is the time to build on the momentum of having a dedicated in-house lawyer and scale this into a truly best-in-class legal function by hiring a Commercial Counsel to join me as the next member of the legal team. Ashby is at a real inflection point - we closed our Series D in June 2025, revenue is outpacing our financial plans, deal volume and deal size are increasing and our global footprint is expanding. With that growth comes more sophisticated enterprise customers, new regulations and deeper cross-functional complexity. We are hiring for a Commercial Counsel to support proactive, scalable legal partnership with Ashby’s go-to-market teams. This is a hands-on, execution-focused role at the center of deal flow. You will be in commercial contracts every day, partnering closely with Sales to help close deals and directly drive revenue. You should also have demonstrated experience in identifying and implementing new legal technologies that allow us to build scalable commercial processes, unblocking customers and enabling the business to grow efficiently As an early legal hire, you will also have ownership of vendor agreements and negotiations, and have meaningful exposure to broader strategic initiatives across legal operations, global expansion, product, privacy, AI governance, PeopleOps, and anything else you show a passion for. We are looking for someone with existing in-house commercial contracting experience who thrives in a high-growth environment, builds strong internal relationships quickly, and earns trust through responsiveness and pragmatism. You are comfortable advocating firmly and thoughtfully with both customers and internal stakeholders. You know how to protect key risk positions while keeping negotiations constructive and moving forward. You care about strong execution today and building the right foundations for tomorrow. If you are energized by growth, excited to work alongside exceptional talent, and motivated by the opportunity to help shape and scale a high-impact legal function from the ground up, I would love to meet you.

Requirements

• JD from an accredited law school and active license to practice law in the US (or equivalent qualification in relevant jurisdiction).
• 4-6 years of legal experience, ideally combining law firm training with in-house experience at a fast growing company.
• Strong experience in commercial contract negotiation (customer-side and vendor-side) contributing directly to revenue growth.
• Excellent interpersonal skills - you genuinely enjoy working with sales teams and building trusted relationships internally and externally.
• Good judgment and ability to balance legal risk with business objectives.
• Clear, concise communication style - able to explain legal concepts in plain language and develop playbooks and GTM facing enablement materials.
• Organized and able to manage multiple deals and priorities simultaneously.

Nice To Haves

• Prior experience as an early legal hire in a fast growing SaaS, tech, or AI company.
• Familiarity with SaaS business models and standard SaaS contract terms.
• Exposure and strong familiarity to privacy and data protection frameworks (DPAs, GDPR, CCPA)
• Experience building or scaling contract operations, including implementing legal tech tools.

Responsibilities

• Review, draft, and negotiate customer NDAs, MSAs, Order Forms, and DPAs with a focus on speed, commercial pragmatism and scalability.
• Be a responsive, reliable partner to the sales team and other internal stakeholders - someone they want to work with, not around.
• Support the scalability of commercial contracting at Ashby through the development of contract playbooks, fallback positions, and developing material to enable our sales team with items such as negotiation guidance.
• Partner closely with security, IT and our product teams to ensure prospect and customer questionnaires are responded to accurately, promptly and develop scalable solutions.
• Review and negotiate vendor agreements in partnership with business owners and relevant cross-functional stakeholders and meet SLAs.
• Own and improve legal operations through new workflows, technology and tools relevant to contract workflows, such as CLM, and CPQ tools, and enabling GTM teams. You should be excited about the opportunities that AI and new tools bring to the legal industry with proven experience driving adoption internally.
• Contribute to other in-house legal work as required including legal operations, employment matters, IP, corporate governance, and drafting both internal guidance materials to enable teams and external publications to educate and engage our customers and community.
• Work with external counsel as required.
• Flag issues and escalate appropriately; know when to pull me in.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity.
• 10-year exercise window for stock options.
• Unlimited PTO with four weeks recommended per year.
• Twelve weeks of fully paid family leave in the US. We plan to expand this to employees in other countries as situations arise.
• Generous equipment, software, and office furniture budget. Get what you need to be happy and productive!
• $100/month education budget with more expensive items (like conferences) covered with manager approval.
• If you’re in the US, top-notch health insurance for you and your dependents with all premiums covered by us.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed